Category Archives: Group outings

United Way Volunteer day June 8th

Posted on June 8, 2012 by Ken Arsenault

Today was the annual United Way volunteer day, with over 600 people volunteering to do work on various community activities, it is the largest one day volunteer group in Canada. The day started at 7:30 am at the Coverdale Rec center with a fantastic breakfast for all and a few speeches and thanks to the sponsors. Around 8:30 am we all left and went to the new parking lot to meet with our group of volunteers. To our great surprise we had two groups of 8 people each!

One group was from The Iriving Corporation and the other was from Exxon Mobil. They were a very happy and enthusiastic group of people prepared to work. We had a little talk explaining the Trail and the work we had planned for the day and then everyone grabbed a wheelbarrow, rake or shovel and we headed in to the first, main fire pit area. The work we wanted to complete was getting some heavier, large rocks down on the end of the loop trail where it comes out at the fire pit and then cover it over over with the finer stuff to make the trail nice and smooth. I would guess we moved well over 50 loads of the two types of rocks today and covered 50 meters of trail.

Some people also helped to clear brush away from the trail to make it cleaner and more appealing. We installed a new cable spindle table and fixed another while there as well. Lunch was provided for all from Subway which was delicious and George Mundle came out to make tea and coffee. I started a fire in the pit which gave us a nice atmosphere to sit around when having a drink or lunch, it also helped to keep some of the bugs away. Many people and dogs came by and told us what a wonderful trail and great job we were doing keeping this trail in tip top shape, not bad for a bunch of volunteers.

There was a camera crew there filming us work and interviewed Rod Steeves and Jim Dewolfe so hopefully I will find it soon on YouTube and get it on here as well.

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Mill stream loop work

Posted on November 15, 2011 by Ken Arsenault

I was in today to help update and repair the Mill Stream loop section. At one point there were 11 people there doing something. We carried in MANY loads with the wheelbarrows and cut some dead falls and made some new hand rails. We started at 8am and left just after 2pm. There is still lots of work to be done but if we do a little at a time it will all add up soon enough. I was a little frustrated with some people today who clearly saw us working 20 feet down the side trail and still came down it, forcing us to stop our work and let them by, they could have stayed on the main section. They didn’t even say thanks for letting them by but many others told us we were doing a good job and thanked us for the work. I hope to keep getting the opportunity to work with some of the trail veterans and learn from them. Here some pictures of what we worked on today.